Sigh, ok that proved to be a lot more work than I thought. But, I'm getting there. I now have a version that I can test for functionality. If it works, we can look into the coding and texturing of climates and groundtypes.
For climates, I'm using the following mapping:
- sub-arctic -> boreal pine forest
- fertile grassland -> steppe
- dense forest -> humid continental
all of these interspersed with:
- alpine -> continental wetland
- open Forest -> oceanic
- mediterranean -> mediterranean
interspersed with
- swamp -> temperate wetland
- infertile grassland -> cool semi arid
- semi arid -> hot semi arid
- rocky desert -> cool desert
- sandy desert -> hot desert
interspersed with
- highland -> tropical wetland.
For groundtypes I'm mostly sticking with "what's on the tin" for
- beach,
- open forest
- dense forest
- low mountains
- high mountains
groundtypes varying quite a bit depending on climate are
- wilderness
- swamp
- hills
special mention for the 'fertilities'.
Generally these are
high fertility -> arable land
medium fertility -> mixed farming
low fertility -> grazing.
I have chosen to move cultivated lands under desert climates into the desert's arid counterpart, and repurpose the desert 'fertilities' to cover various variations in ground cover.
Finally, something I am not entirely sure about yet is the use of low mountain groundtype for (impassable) rocky desert.
So, what is next. When can you see it? Well here's the thing. The next step would be to load the thing and debug it, then test it, make adjustments and do the coding and texturing, but tbh, I'm kind of burnt out on the thing and I would like to take a break, so I'm not going to embark on that right now. So, I'm happy to upload the map files somewhere for you, but if I do, don't expect me to process feedback any time soon.